


more than just the game

by cathect



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All Human AU, High school crushes, M/M, Short, Tumblr Prompt, more pining than a pine tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 23:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8032798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathect/pseuds/cathect
Summary: “You’re paying a scary amount of attention to me right now.” Stiles says. Derek is staring down at his coffee mug like he’ll find the answers to life in the dark liquid.“I always pay attention to you.” When Derek’s eyes flick back up to meet Stiles’s they’re void of any sarcasm or humor at all.“I-” He coughs. “You-” Stiles’s mouth is opening and closing, the beginnings of sentences forming in the back of his throat but dying before they can hit his tongue.“Come on, Stiles.” Derek laughs a little. “Don’t act like you don’t know I’ve had a thing for you since high school.”





	more than just the game

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was written based on the prompt: “i drunkenly tried to fight you and knocked myself out but you were kind enough to take care of me till i woke up.” by toxixpumpkin on tumblr!
> 
> oh, also: this is my first fic posted on here so be gentle?

_ “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut.” - Damien Hurst _

-

Stiles would know the ceiling of his apartment anywhere.

He could pick it out of a lineup, could tell you the exact shade of paint (eggshells on ice), and when it was painted (January 7th, 2013). He’s spent the past three years looking at that ceiling, tracing the cracks and lines in the paint with his eyes, memorizing the design.

This is not his ceiling.

Sitting up, the first thing he notices is that his head is  _ pounding _ . The second thing he notices is that, just like he assumed, he is not in his own apartment right now.

No, this place is bigger, nicer, cleaner than the place he shares with Scott. Stiles and Scott have been best friends for basically their entire lives and are 100% used to and okay with each other’s messes. Stiles’s dad thinks this might lead to Stiles having a very unhappy marriage someday.

But now that Stiles is positive he has no idea where he is, the curiosity kicks in. He’s always ending up in weird situations so there are a thousand possibilities, really, of how he ended up here.

_ Did I break into someone’s house? _

_ Did I get invited to stay over somewhere? _

_ Did I sleep with someone? _

He’s pretty sure he would remember the answer to any one of these questions. Unless, of course, he was drunk. Which, now that he thinks about it, he might have been hammered last night.

Thinking hard, Stiles manages to uncover the memory of going out with the guys from his high school’s lacrosse team. Everyone is in town for the holidays and Isaac and Danny had  _ insisted _ that Scott and Stiles join them because “what’s the point without the captain and the Stiles?” and, honestly, they really didn’t need more convincing than that.

He remembers going to that little bar near the edge of town where the cool kids used to go and pretend to smoke their parents’ cigarettes, tossing the still-burning butts too close to the walls and almost setting the place on fire. The place is still relatively nice, despite being one of the oldest buildings in Beacon Hills.

Stiles can remember a few shots of tequila, but, after someone brought out the fireball, his mind goes a little fuzzy.

“Glad to see you’re awake.” 

Stiles almost jumps a foot in the air at the sound of someone speaking to him. He doesn’t know why he’s so surprised. If he’s at someone else’s place, someone had to have brought him here. 

“I was kind of worried you died on my couch.” There are some footsteps before the person comes into view. And Stiles is absolutely baffled to be looking at the face of Derek Hale.

Derek Hale is the epitome of good looking guys in Beacon Hills and Stiles has had a thing for him since his first day of high school - Derek was a senior while Stiles was a freshman. Derek had smiled at him in the hallway, probably given a nod of acknowledgement to top it off, and Stiles was done for.

Any time Derek spoke to him after that, it was like words were his enemy, but it sure didn’t stop him from trying.

“Derek?” He sounds like an idiot, saying his name as a question like he didn’t just fucking say it, but Derek doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he sort of chuckles as he brings Stiles a glass of water. Stiles gulps it down gratefully.

“You seem surprised to see me.” The tone in Derek’s voice makes Stiles a little wary to ask what happened the night before. Again, one of the questions on the forefront of his mind is  _ did I sleep with this guy last night? _ “Though I guess you were really fucking drunk.”

Now Stiles has to know and, even though he’s pretty sure he’d know if he’d been fucked by Derek Hale, he has to ask.

“Did I-?” Stiles isn’t really sure how to pose the question, so he pauses and scratches the top of his head for a second. “Did we-?” He gestures to the two of them, a sort of awkward flailing of his hand, and, by the way his green eyes go wide, Derek finally seems to understand.

“Sleep together? Oh, god no.” Stiles wants to make a joke about being offended by this response, but his brain isn’t exactly working at full capacity right now. All the pieces are there, but nothing seems funny when you want to be swallowing an entire bottle of ibuprofen.

“Then what exactly did I do to end up here?” The hand that had been gesturing to the two of them is now gesturing to the room he’s in - probably Derek’s loft - and Stiles really needs to stop gesturing.

“Well you tried to ‘kick my ass’.” Both of them pause to laugh because there’s no way, in a million years, Stiles could ever win in a fight against Derek fucking Hale. “And then you tried to make out with me.”

“Sounds like I was sending some pretty mixed messages.” Stiles’s first instinct is to use sarcasm to make the situation go away. It’s what he’s good at.

“I’ll say.” Derek responds, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “Here, I’ll go find you some Advil or something.” Stiles smiles appreciatively as Derek leaves.

He’s a little mad at Drunk Stiles for being even more of a dumbass than usual. Like, of course he’s wanted to make out with Derek Hale since high school - who wouldn’t? - but that doesn’t mean he wants  _ Derek  _ to know that.

Or does he?

_ Was Derek into it? _

He didn’t seem too disgusted when he told Stiles about the attempted assault of his mouth. But why would he? He probably just thought it was Drunk Stiles being Drunk Stiles. And maybe it should be kept that way.

Derek returns a minute later, a bottle of Advil in one hand, and a glass of water. The glass of water, Stiles realizes, is the one from literally five minutes earlier, just refilled. He hadn’t even noticed Derek taking it away from him. He was too busy watching his face.

“There.” Derek sets the two items down on the table in front of Stiles. “That should help with your head and your hand.” Stiles looks up, confused.

“My hand?”

“Yeah.” Derek laughs, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table. “When you tried to punch me, you kind of missed and hit the bar.” Now that he mentions it, Stiles can feel a dull ache in his knuckles.

“I tried to punch you?” It’s more asked out of disbelief at his own actions than questioning if Derek is telling the truth. Even as he asks it, though, he’s stretching out his fingers in front of his face and examining the bruises starting to form.

“Yeah, and then hit your head pretty hard on the follow-through and passed out.” Derek continues and Stiles has bits and pieces of the night before flooding in to fill in his visual memory. 

“I thought that maybe you should have gone to the hospital, but Scott insisted you just needed to sleep it off on someone’s couch. I offered mine since it’s closer to the bar. Plus Scott had some girl with him and I didn’t think that he’d be able to keep an eye on you locked away with her in his room.” Stiles laughs at this, and then furrows his eyebrows.

“Wait, Scott was here?” he asks. Derek nods.

“He helped me drag you in here.” He confirms, nodding his head in the direction of the huge sliding door that theoretically leads to the outside world. “He insisted. I mean, I could have just carried you myself.”

Stiles tries not to read too far into why Derek includes this information.

“I guess it could have been worse.” Stiles says, setting down the glass after he’s finished using it to down three small, red pills. “I mean, at least I didn’t do anything  _ too  _ horribly embarrassing, right?”

“Oh the story’s not over yet.” When Stiles looks up, Derek’s face is practically expressionless, not giving anything away. “Do you always talk in your sleep? Or is it just when you’re drunk?”

“Oh god.” Derek lets a laugh spill over his teeth at this. “I hope just when I’m drunk.”

“Don’t worry. You didn’t say anything about your deepest darkest secret or anything.” Stiles lets out a sigh of relief as Derek stands and stretches his back a little. “Though, I  _ do _ remember my name and ‘delicious’ being in the same sentence.”

“Oh god.” Stiles repeats, dragging a hand down his face.

Suddenly there is a bundle of fabric hitting Stiles’s face and he picks it up only to realize it’s a jacket. The jacket isn’t his, and, for some reason, this causes him to take a glance down.

“This shirt isn’t mine.” Stiles mutters dumbly as he stands up. Derek is putting on his own leather jacket. As he shifts his shoulders to push one of his arms through the sleeves, his olive green shirt rides up, giving Stiles just the barest glimpse of tan skin.

He thinks he might pass out.

“No. You threw up on yours.”

Derek Hale helped a drunk Stiles change his shirt.

Derek Hale gave Stiles a shirt to borrow.

Derek Hale saw Stiles  _ shirtless _ .

The shirt on Stiles’s body is  _ Derek Hale’s _ .

Stiles feels like he’s had the wind knocked out of him.

“Come on.” Derek gestures to the door with his head. Stiles, still clutching the jacket - a faded, blue, zip-up hoodie, so it would seem - takes an awkward step towards him.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to lunch.” Derek says it like it should have been obvious. “I hear greasy food can do wonders for a hangover.” 

“You know, it’s actually been proven that the oils in greasy food don’t absorb alcohol the way the people think they do, and, in fact, can make you feel even worse.” The words come tumbling out of Stiles’s stupid mouth. He wants to reach out for them, shove them back in his mouth, and swallow them back down so they can pretend he didn’t even say anything.

“I could always just take you home.” Derek is facing the door but Stiles can see the half-smirk on his face.

Oh, he’s just  _ toying _ with him now.

“No, no.” Stiles holds up his hands, waves them like he’s trying to get Derek’s attention which, if he’s been honest, he has been for a long, long time. “Lunch sounds awesome.”

“Good.” He pulls open the huge sliding door and steps out.

Stiles practically trips over himself trying to follow.

 

-

 

It’s the smell that catches Stiles’s attention first.

_ Eats _ , a little 50’s-style diner, was built recently, and Stiles hasn’t had a chance to check it out yet. Well,  _ hadn’t _ … until today.

Derek holds the door open for him, which is honestly such a sweet gesture and Stiles should really thank him, but the smell hits him like a freight train.

It’s not that it smells bad. No, in fact, it smells fucking  _ incredible _ . It’s the fact that Stiles can tell this is the kind of food with aromas that will hug the fibers of his clothes, wrap around them and hold on so tight that he’ll smell like a french fry until he washes them at least three times. Stiles usually throws out the shirts he wears into places like this.

But Stiles would literally rather throw himself into oncoming traffic than do anything to damage, harm, or otherwise disrespect Derek Hale’s shirt.

The waitress - a redhead with too much makeup and not enough buttons on her shirt done - seats them at a booth near the back. Derek politely orders a coffee and Stiles dumbly asks if they have any sort of artificially orange-flavored soda. She informs him they have Crush and he pumps his fist in the air in victory as he confirms he’d like to order it.

The amused look on Derek’s face can’t be described as anything other than fond.

The waitress returns a minute later with their drinks and leaves again with the rest of their respective orders.

Stiles desperately wants to start a conversation, but isn’t really sure what to say.

“Hey, I don’t think I ever said thank you for everything you’ve done for me in the last twenty-four hours.” Yeah, that works.

“Please.” Derek waves his hand. “It was nothing.”

“Dude, it wasn’t nothing.”

“I promise it was.”

“Derek,” Stiles tries to pretend like he doesn’t enjoy the way Derek’s name feels on his tongue, “A Stilinski’s gratitude is rare and precious. Take it.” Derek rolls his eyes, but the smile still hasn’t left his face.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” Stiles studies the label of the ketchup bottle on their table, trying to figure out what to talk about next. “How’s SCU? You’re studying art history, right?”

Stiles is absolutely dumbstruck.

“You know what I’m studying?”

Frankly, he’s more shocked that Derek knows where he’s going to college, but it seemed easier to ask the other.

“We’re friends on Facebook.”

Oh, that’s true.

“Right.” Stiles swallows. “Umm, yeah. It’s going good! I’m part of a Special Topics course right now. So, I have to, like, organize a whole exhibition myself which is cool.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” Derek wraps both of his large hands around his mug, leaning forward on his elbows.

Stiles goes into the seemingly hour-long explanation of what organizing an exhibition entails. He expects Derek to stop him at any time, to tell him that he gets it, that Stiles really doesn’t need to go into this much detail, but he doesn’t. He keeps eye contact with Stiles the whole time, nodding and gesturing in other ways that ensure Stiles knows he’s paying attention.

Stiles finds it kind of intimidating; nobody usually pays this much attention to anything he says.

Soon, their food is almost gone and Stiles is still talking. Derek hasn’t complained once.

It’s making Stiles  _ nervous _ .

“You’re paying a scary amount of attention to me right now.” Stiles says. Derek is staring down at his coffee mug like he’ll find the answers to life in the dark liquid.

“I always pay attention to you.” When Derek’s eyes flick back up to meet Stiles’s they’re void of any sarcasm or humor at all.

“I-” He coughs. “You-” Stiles’s mouth is opening and closing, the beginnings of sentences forming in the back of his throat but dying before they can hit his tongue.

“Come on, Stiles.” Derek laughs a little. “Don’t act like you don’t know I’ve had a thing for you since high school.”

Stiles might have to call an ambulance; he thinks his heart has stopped beating.l

“I’m sorry?” His mouth has gone dry, and he wants to take a drink of his Crush, but he can’t seem to move his arm.

“You don’t have to play dumb just for my benefit.” Derek’s ears are pink.

“Derek,” Stiles chokes out, hands pressing into the table like it might offer some sort of stability. “I can promise you that I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Stiles.”

He could really get used to hearing Derek say his name.

“Derek.”

“I didn’t go to all the lacrosse games because I love the sport.”

It takes Stiles a full minute to process this information.

“You went to all the lacrosse games?” That definitely isn’t the response Stiles had intended to give. Derek is now full on blushing.

“You were a good player.”

“I was terrible.”

“Well, you looked good playing.”

“ _ Oh my god. _ ”

Stiles keeps waiting for the punchline, for Ashton Kutcher to pop out and tell him he’s being Punk’d, but Derek just holds his eyes, unwavering.

“You’re serious.” Stiles says incredulously. He practically jumps out of his seat when Derek reaches across the table and grabs onto his hand.

“Of course I’m serious.” Derek’s hand is warm, firm, grasping on tight to Stiles’s fingers. “I honestly thought you knew.”

“Knew?” Stiles sputters. “How the hell could I have known?”

“God knows everybody else does.” Derek coughs and glances away.

“What do you mean everybody?” He’s asking a lot of questions that he doesn’t really care about knowing the answer to, but he can’t seem to get himself to ask Derek the question he really wants to ask:  _ how soon can we be back at your loft? _

“I mean everybody.” Derek’s voice is shakey. Stiles has never heard him like this. “Scott and Isaac were the ones who confronted me and made me realize what I was feeling .”

Stiles swears he hears brakes screech in his head.

“Scott knew?” Derek nods his confirmation and Stiles makes a mental note to beat the shit out of Scott later for not telling him. “This is fucking insane.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Derek rushes to say, looking down at his now-empty mug. “We can just forget this conversation ever happened.” His grip on Stiles’s hand loosens like he’s going to let go and it causes Stiles to involuntarily hold on tighter to prevent him from doing so.

“Uncomfortable?” Stiles asks, laughing loud enough to draw the attention of a few of the people around them. “Derek, I have been in love with you since my freshman year.”

Derek’s head whips up so fast that Stiles is worried he may develop some serious neck issues.

“What?”

“If your thing for me was ‘obvious’, then mine for you might as well have been a neon sign above my head.” Derek shifts his hand and twines their fingers together.

They are watching each other in comfortable silence as the waitress comes back with the check. Stiles presses his card into the woman’s hand before Derek can even open his wallet.  
  
“Hey-”

“It’s the least I can do after last night.” Derek opens his mouth to protest again, but Stiles throws him a look that stops him in his tracks.

“Fine.” He grumbles. "But, next time, I'm paying."

"There'll be a next time?" Stiles grins.

"There will be lots of next times."

She returns a minute later with his card. As Stiles is signing the receipt, Derek stands up and offers his hand. Smiling softly, Stiles drops the pen and takes it, letting Derek pull him to his feet.

A second later, Derek is kissing him.

Derek’s mouth is warm and sure against Stiles’s and he’s so lightheaded that he feels like he’s on top of Mt. Everest.

“You can’t possibly understand how long I’ve wanted to do that.” Derek mumbles against his lips. Stiles laughs, curling his hand around the back of Derek’s neck.

“I promise you,” he says, “I can.”

For a minute, they’ve both forgotten how public this is, and it’s like they’re the only ones in the room. Stiles is pretty sure he’s dreaming, but, if that’s the case, he’ll kill anyone who tries to wake him up.

-

Back at Derek’s loft, both of them are finding it increasingly difficult to detach their lips from the other’s, so no more conversation happens until they are spent, and the sheets need to be washed.

“Hey, Derek?” Stiles lifts his head from Derek’s chest to look up at him.

“Hmm?”

“Will you let me take you on a date?” Derek laughs, his fingernails scraping gently along Stiles’s scalp.

“Stiles, that was a date.”

“I know.” Stiles rolls his eyes. “But I mean, like, a real date. Like, let me wine and dine you.” He wiggles his eyebrows and Derek rolls his eyes.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Is that a yes?”

Derek kisses him in response.


End file.
